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Intentional Living Grows Through the Bullets of a Journal?

Capitalism and the Organized Life

H. Bradford

12/3/18

Mao Zedong once wrote that political power grows through the barrel of a gun. I am no Maoist, but there seems to be a cult growing around the bullet journal. It is enough to make me wonder if intentional living grows through the bullets of a journal. It started earlier this year, when I noticed that my coworkers had very elaborate planner books. I have kept a yearly planner and separate goal book for a few years now, but these books were always utilitarian. In the books, I very plainly record my schedule and goals throughout the year. These books were used to track my progress or organize my life. I never considered the aesthetics of keeping a schedule. Then, suddenly, it seemed that everyone had fancy books with stickers and colorful pens, in which they tracked the minutiae of daily living. It seemed like a lot of work…and a lot of cost…as these planners cost $80, plus various accessories. Generally, I had been paying less than $10 for my planning supplies. However, the siren call of stickers, pens, lists, and schedules called me to Michael’s, where I had a 50% off coupon. I bought my own fancy schedule book, albeit a cheaper version.

Image stolen from internet.

First of all, I was surprised to find an entire aisle of the store devoted to planner books. When did this happen? I only noticed the trend this year, when suddenly everyone had these books. And now, boom…a whole aisle! According to the Star Tribune, the first official bullet journal was launched in 2014 by Ryder Carol and today over 281,000 people follow @bulletjournal on Instagram. The goal of these journals, planners, or notebooks is to live more intentionally (Pearson, 2018). Bullet journals are particularly popular among millennials, who on average spend $60-80 on purchases at Appointed, an online store that specializes in paper products such as journals and calendars. A London based psychologist named Dr. Perpetua Neo (whose name seems like a character from the Matrix or a diabolical machine) posits that millenials like these planners because it gives them a sense of control (something they don’t have much of in the face of wars, unstable economy, debt, etc.) (Babur, 2018). That is an interesting theory. Sure, I want control in my own life. But, what is the end goal? Why be in control and what must one be in control of? Common categories for the planning products include finance, goals, health, and spirituality. For me, I want to be more productive. In this sense, bullet planners are something akin to Pinterest meets the scientific management of the personal life. I imagine that if somehow I squeezed out just a little more time from my day, I would be a better person. It is about control, but it is also about productivity and the self as a project.

Scientific management was method of management developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor in his 1911 book “Principles of Scientific Management.” The book was based upon lessons learned when he tried to increase the productivity of workers at Bethlehem Steel. Scientific management involved such things as timing the workers, controlling their movements to improve efficiency, and paying them on the basis of their productive output (Mihm, 2018). Taylorism is alive and well in workplaces today. For instance, each time a work place does a time study to increase efficiency, it is following this century old method of increasing worker productivity by cutting superfluous worker activity and establishing benchmarks or output goals. Amazon warehouse workers have been made to wear bracelets that track how long it takes to fetch items, which they must do each nine seconds (Salame, 2018). From a Marxist perspective, capitalists try to increase the productivity of workers to increase their profits. Workers generate profit for capitalists because there is a gap between the wage they are paid and the value of their production, which is called surplus value. If workers were paid the exact value of their production, there would be no profit. For instance, at one of my jobs I take photographs of Santa Claus. This generates $1000-$2000 of sales each day. In order to make a profit, the photo company must make sure that wages paid to Santa, the photographer, and the managers is less than $1000-$2000 per day. Of course, there are other costs as well, such as photo paper, the camera, costumes and uniforms, receipt paper, etc. These are considered constant capital, that is, they do not generate profit and therefore, while these costs can be cut (such as wasting less photo paper) they are mostly money sinks. On the other hand, labor is variable capital. A lot can be done to manipulate variable capital in order to generate more profit. Wages can be cut, productivity increased, work day lengthened, breaks shortened, staffing deceased, etc. The matter of profit making is complicated by the fact that things such as competition, the replacement of workers with machines, and the need to invest in new technologies tends to cause profits to decline with time. That means that inevitably, labor costs have to be cut and the exploitation of workers must be increased to remain profitable. Scientific management was a way to increase profits by squeezing more productivity from workers.

What does all of this mean for personal lives or have anything to do with planners? No one profits from how many books I read in a year, how many days a week I work out at the gym, or any number of things I might track in my journal. However, I believe that the rise of bullet journaling serves capitalism in a number of ways. For one, it seems that some aspects of bullet journaling apply scientific management to the personal life. That is, if a person tracks their goals, daily habits, spending, fitness, or other facets of their life in an intentional manner, a person can eke out more productivity. Productivity is viewed as a virtue in our society. It is rare to be shamed for being productive or sad because your day was exceptionally productive. Max Weber argued that the virtue of hard work associated with Protestantism (frugality, discipline, and hard work) were important in fostering the growth of capitalism. While Marxists look to material conditions and would view these values as a part of the superstructure of a society, these sorts of values certainly play a role in the functioning of an economic system. Capitalism functions a lot better if the workforce generally values productivity and hard work. On the other hand, because we are overworked, we have little time for leisure and personal pursuits. Our free time has to be regimented because it IS in limited supply. My time sheet for two weeks of work at ONE job was 116 hrs this week. I have two other part time jobs in addition to this. My coworkers who lovingly fill out their journals also work multiple jobs. There is no way for me to read 30 books, see 50 new species of birds, or attend 150 political events a year without some radical scheduling. My desire for productivity in my personal life is a desire to live as something more than a worker. My desire to work is the desire to sustain myself and have some extra for living (hobbies, travel, experiences). The sad thing is that about 8 million Americans have multiple jobs. Pretty planners might be a way to beautify the prison of work that we find ourselves in until retirement or death removes us from the labor market.

I drew a volcano in my book.

Another aspect of this trend is gender. These planners are marketed to women. I was frustrated that the designs for the books, stickers, and other accessories were SO extremely feminine. The planner was full of floral prints, rainbows, unicorns, pastels, You Go Girl, Girl Boss, vapid inspirational words or quotes about being a free spirit or following your dreams, and other traditional gender tripe. Why can’t planners have skulls, fossils, bats, moths, dark colors, swear words, quotes from revolutionaries, glow in the dark, scratch and sniff, etc. I want a planner that says I will work until I die or that suicide is always an option. I don’t need the “Happy Planner” (the brand I bought) since I think “The Scarred by Depression Planner” is a more accurate description of my way of life. Why do women have to be happy? What if someone wants “The Angry Planner” wherein you write your goals into little flaming piles of shit? Anyway, I am sure if these planners remain popular, these products will start to appear (if they haven’t already) to draw more consumers into the market. However, right now the planners are very traditionally feminine (which isn’t terrible, but just seems narrow and to me, indicates that these planners appeal to white, middle class women with semi-conventional tastes. . The fact that these planners are marketed to women also indicates some things about society. One, women don’t have a lot of time! Planners are a way to manage time, which many women lack due to responsibilities as paid workers and unpaid workers who take care of children, elderly, or adult men by cooking, cleaning, and managing homes. It also represents the ways in which women feel pressured to view their bodies and selves as an unfinished project. Tracking diets, exercise, hobbies, goals, etc. are a way to become an ideal woman.

I drew a bird. But will it really be …my year?

Anyway, I bought myself a planner. I chose one with a travel theme. I like travel and I want 2019 to be a great year. I enjoy tracking things and I will admit that I view myself and my life as an unfinished project. I am never enough. I will never be enough. I doubt that a planner will help me feel like a enough, but it might help me squeeze more productivity out of each day. Or, perhaps it will serve as a memory book of all the things I did or tried to do in 2019. I don’t think there is anything wrong with creating fun schedule books. I just think this trend represents a certain way of existing within capitalism and patriarchy. In previous societies, such a thing might be unthinkable because days, hours, and even linear time are concepts that discipline us into workers…and there was a time long ago when we weren’t workers or at least not the wage workers we are today. I don’t think bullet journals are some kind of capitalist conspiracy to oppress us. For people with ADHD it may help organize life in a useful way. For others, it may be a fun, relaxing, hobby akin to scrap booking or more traditional journaling. However, I do think that if a person is going to live intentionally, this should also mean intentionally questioning why we must be so productive in the first place and who profits from our sense that we are not enough! Certainly the companies that make these books profit if they are charging $80 for them! Health and fitness industries, travel industries, cosmetic industries, magazines, etc. all survive by the insecurities of women who feel they are not enough. I am not above this. I am not enough. And because of that, capitalism will always be able to squeeze just a little more from me at work and at leisure….

Lessons from World War I

H. Bradford

11/12/18

November 11, 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. This is a momentous anniversary since our world is still deeply influenced by the outcome of World War I. Yet, in the United States, World War I is not a popular war to learn about. It is not a war that American students love to learn about in the same way the they love World War II, with its villains and seemingly black and white struggle against fascism. Despite its impact on world history, it does not lend itself as many movies and documentaries. When it does, for instance in the popular Wonder Woman film released in 2017, it is warped to resemble World War II to make itself more interesting to American audiences. Of course, World War I is important in its own right and offers important historical lessons. As an activist, it is useful to examine the struggle against World War I, as it was a crucible that tested the ideological mettle of revolutionaries and activists.

World War I- An Introduction

World War I is significant for its brutality, industrialized warfare, and for reshaping the globe. The brutality of the war is massive stain on the blood soaked histories of all imperialist nations. As a low estimate, over 8.5 million combatants died in the war with 21 million wounded and up to 13 million civilian casualties. The nations that went to war were criminal in their barbaric sacrifice of millions of soldiers. For instance, the Russian Empire sent troops into battle armed only with axes, no wire cutters, and without boots. Early in the war, of an army corps of 25,000 soldiers, only one returned to Russia, as the rest were either killed or taken prisoner. In the first month of the war alone, 310,000 Russians were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. On several occasions, British soldiers were ordered to advance against German trenches, which only resulted in massive bloodshed as they faced machine gun fire and tangled miles of barbed wire fences. When forced to march against the trenches at Loos, 8,000 of 10,000 British soldiers were killed for a gain of less than two miles of occupied territory. In the first two years of the war, Britain had 250,000 dead soldiers for the gain of eight square miles. At the Battle of Verdun, 90,000 British soldiers perished in six weeks. At the Battle of Somme, 57,000 British troops perished in one day and 19,000 in one hour alone. The fighting continued even after the Armistice was signed on 11/11/18, as it was signed at 5 am, but did not go into effect until 11 am. In the twilight between war and peace, 2,738 soldiers died and 8,000 were wounded. The scope of this senseless bloodshed seems unfathomable. The scale of human suffering was magnified by industrial methods of war. World War I saw new weapons, such as tanks, airplanes, giant guns mounted on trains, machine guns (which had been used in previous conflicts such as the Boer war), aerial bombings from zeppelins, submarines, and poison gas. Barbed wire was also a recent invention, which secured the defensive lines of both sides, ensuring a bloody stalemate. The conflict itself resulted in the collapse of empires and the division of colonial spoils (Hochschild, 2011).

Almost everyone who has taken a history class remembers the tired narrative that World War I began in June 1914 with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his pregnant wife, Sofia in Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip. This unleashed a chain of events wherein Russia vowed to protect Serbia against an Austro-Hungarian invasion. In turn, Austro-Hungary sought to ally itself with Germany against Russia and France vowed to ally itself with Russia against Germany. Britain justified entering the war on behalf of poor, innocent, neutral, little Belgium (which just years prior was neither poor, innocent, or neutral in King Leopold II’s genocidal rubber extraction from the Congo Free State), a strategic passage for German troops invading France. The narrative goes that World War I was born from the anarchy of alliances. Of course, the causes of the war are far more profound than upkeeping treaties and national friendships. This method of framing the war as a domino of effect treaties renders the possibility of resisting the war invisible. It also ignores that these treaties themselves were the outcome of imperialist countries volleying for power.

For historical context, there were massive changes in Europe during the 1800s. On one hand, the 1800s saw the accelerating decline of the Ottoman Empire, which had been considered the sickman of Europe in terms of empires since it lost at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. Wars and independence movements of the 1800s shrank Ottoman territory as countries such as Greece, Serbia, Egypt, Bulgaria, and later Albania, became independent. The Ottoman Empire was strained by internal debate over modernizing or harkening back to bygone times. The century saw the disbanding of the Janissaries, defeat in the Russo-Turkish war, and the revolt of the Young Turks. The Russo-Turkish War saw the establishment of independent Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria. The Treaty of Berlin awarded Bosnia to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which upset Serbians and inspired the formation of the Black Hand, which fought for reunification with Bosnia as well as unification with other areas populated by Serbians. The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire created territorial concerns as newly emerging countries such as Serbia, Bulgaria, and Albania sought to establish boundaries at the expense of one another. The Balkan Wars fought just prior to the start of WWI came out of these territorial disputes. Thus, the Ottoman entry into WWI on the side of Germany and Austro-Hungary was largely in the interest of retaking lost territories. Likewise, Bulgaria joined the conflict on the side of the Central Powers with the hope of regaining territory lost in the 1913 Balkan War, namely southern Macedonia and Greece (Jankowski, 2013).

While Ottomans were in decline, Germany and Russia were struggling for ascendancy. The 1800s saw the formation of the German state, an outcome of the 1866 war between Prussia and Austro-Hungary and the Germanification of people within this territory under Kaiser Wilhelm II. The 1800s also saw Germany’s entry into the imperialist conquest of the world as it sought to colonize places such as modern day Namibia, Botswana, Cameroon, Rwanda, Burundi, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands, etc (Jankowski, 2013). It should also be noted that Germany was 50% larger than its present size with one of Europe’s strongest economies (Hochschild, 2011). The Russian Empire saw its own economy growing with the expansion of railroads and a population twice the size of Germany’s (Hochschild, 2011). Although Russia was hobbled in the 19th century by serfdom and slow industrialization, it won the Russo-Turkish War only to see its gains reversed by the Treaty of Berlin. It was further humiliated by the loss of a 1905 war against Japan and held on to brutal Tsarist autocracy at the cost of hundreds of lives in the face of protests for bread and labor reforms that same year. The 1800s was also a time of Russian imperial expansion into Central Asia and the Caucasus, with interest in expansion as far as India, much to the chagrin of Britain. After losing the 1905 war with Japan, Russia began to expand and modernize its military, which led to Germany doing the same for fear of being eclipsed (Jankowski, 2013). This drive for global conquest and for gobbling up the shrinking territories is again related to imperialism.

German colonies at the turn of the century

Prior to the outbreak of World War I, European powers expected that war was inevitable. British and French officials were expecting Germany to go to war with Russia after Russia’s 1905 uprising. In 1894, France and Russia entered an alliance with one another that if one was attacked by Germany, the other would declare war on Germany to ensure a war on two fronts. France had lost territory (Alsace and Lorraine) in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, so there was a strong desire for revenge among nationalists who wanted to go to war with Germany to reclaim lost land (Tuchman, 1990). Between 1908 and 1913, the arms expenses of the six largest countries of Europe increased by 50% and 5-6% of national budgets were devoted to military spending (Hochschild, 2011). For nine years, Britain and France strategized what a German attack would look like and duly prepared. Belgian had been created as a neutral state in 1830 with Britain a strong proponent of neutrality to secure itself from invasion. In 1913, Germans helped to reorganize the Ottoman Army, which upset Russia. France and Germany had each developed their own war plans, such as France’s Plan 17 and Germany’s Schlieffen Plan (Tuchman, 1990). Even in popular culture in the years leading up to the war, German invasion became a fiction genre. For example, the Daily Mail ran a novel called The Invasion of 1910, which depicted a German invasion of the East coast of England (Hochschild, 2011).

WWI and Imperialism

From a Marxist perspective, the primary cause of World War I was imperialism. Imperialism was the linchpin of the anti-war socialist analysis of World War I, a topic which we be explored in greater detail in the next section. The main proponent of this perspective was Vladimir Lenin, who drew his analysis of imperialism from the writings of Rosa Luxemburg, who wrote The Accumulation of Capital and Nikolai Bukharin, who wrote Imperialism and the World Economy. Lenin also developed his theory based upon economist John Hobson’s Imperialism: A Study and Marxist economist Rudolf Hilferding’s Financial Capital (Nation, 1989). According to Lenin, imperialism was the highest stage of capitalism, characterized by such things as monopoly capital, a monopoly of large banks and financial institutions, the territorial partition of the world, the economic partition of the world by cartels, and the control of raw materials by trusts and the financial oligarchy. Lenin characterized imperialism resulting from a trend towards the concentration of productive power. That is, imperialism features fewer companies with larger worker forces and greater production. To him, the movement towards the monopolization of capital occurred following a series of economic crises in capitalism in 1873 and 1900 (2005) The fusion of capital into larger blocs was an important characteristic of capitalism observed by Karl Marx. It occurred when larger capitalists destroying smaller ones and through the union of smaller capital into larger ones, a process mediated by banks and stock markets. Once there were fewer firms on the playing field, they often united into cartels or agreements to limit competition and divide the market. Banks also became concentrated into fewer powerful banks, which melded with industrial capital and the state (Patniak, 2014). On one hand, imperialism provided the advantage that it increased economic organization, planning, and efficiency, which were economic characteristics that Lenin theorized might serve a transition to socialism. On the other hand, imperialism also resulted in less innovation, stagnation, and an unevenness in concentrations of capital. This unevenness created contradictions in the development of cities versus rural areas, heavy versus light industry, gaps between rich and poor, and gaps between colonies and colonizers. These contradictions created systemic instability in the long run, which cartels could only temporarily stave off (Nation, 1989).

Imperialism resulted in increased competition of state supported monopolies for markets and raw materials. World War I was the result of partitioning the world. In this context, workers were given the choice between fighting for their own national monopolies or making revolution. Lenin believed that workers should turn imperialist war into a civil war against capitalism. This was in contrast to social democrats who wanted workers to fight for their nations or Kautsky who felt workers should defend their nations, but not fight on the offensive. Kautsky had postulated that the world was in a state of ultra imperialism, which would actually result in greater peace and stability as the stakes of war were higher. Rosa Luxemburg believed that capitalism had not yet reached every corner of the globe, so revolution was not yet possible. Thus, there was debate over the nature of imperialism within the socialist movement. To Lenin, imperialism allowed the prospect of revolution in both advanced and colonized countries, since colonized countries were brought into imperialist wars as soldiers (Nation, 1989). For instance, 400,000 African forced laborers died in the war for Great Britain. The first use of poison gas in the war was in April 1915 and the first victims were French troops from North Africa who observed the greenish yellow mist of chlorine, then succumbed to coughing blood and suffocation. Although the horror of zeppelin bombs fell on Britain in May 1915, the first use of zeppelin bombings was actually by Spain and France before the war, to punish Moroccans for uprising. And while Britain justified the war as a matter of self-determination for Belgium, they crushed self-determination for Ireland when 1,750 Irish nationalists rose up in 1916 for independence. Britain sent troops there, eventually out numbering the nationalists 20 to 1. Fifteen of leaders of the uprising were shot, including James Connolly who was already wounded when executed and had to be tied to a chair to be shot (Hochschild, 2011). Further, while the European arena is given more historical attention, battles were fought in colonies as well. In 1916 in south-west Tanzania, Germany fought the the British with an army of about 15,000. Of this number, 12,000 were Africans- who fought other Africans fighting on behalf of the British. Because the borders were created by Europeans and did not represent cultural, historical, or tribal lands, these African soldiers sometimes had to fight members of their family. More than one million East Africans died in World War I (Masebo, 2015). France enlisted 200,000 West Africans to fight on their behalf in the war, calling them Senegalese tirailleurs, even though they came from various West African countries. These soldiers were forcibly recruited, then promised benefits that they were later denied (AFP, 2018). Colonies were inextricably linked, economically and militarily, to imperialist war efforts. Thus, in addition to blaming imperialism for the outbreak of World War I, Lenin postulated that the national struggle of oppressed nationalities was part of the larger struggle against imperialism.

From Forgotten African Battlefields of WWI, CNN

Lenin noted that by 1900, 90% of African territory was controlled by European powers, in contrast to just over 10% in 1876. Polynesia was 98% controlled by European powers compared to 56% in 1876. As of 1900, the world was almost entirely divided between major European powers with the only possibility of redivision. Between 1884 and 1900, France, Britain, Belgium, Portugal, and Germany saw accelerated expansion of their overseas territories. He quoted Cecil Rhode, who saw imperialism as necessary for creating markets for goods and opportunities for surplus British population (Lenin, 2005). By the time World War I began, the banqueting table of capitalists was full. World War I was a means to redistribute these imperialist spoils. Germany sought to test its power against that of Britain and France. To Lenin, one side or the other had to relinquish colonies (Lenin, War and Revolution, 2005). Indeed, World War I resulted in a re-division of the world. The war saw the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, whose territories were divided among the victors. For instance, Syria and Lebanon became French protectorates and Britain took control of Mesopotamia, most of the Arabian peninsula, and Palestine. The United States, a latecomer to the war, cemented its position as a world power. The defeat of Germany resulted in the redistribution of German colonies, such as German East Africa to Britain, part of Mozambique to Portugal, the division of Cameroon between British and French, and the formation of Ghana and Togo under British and French control, respectively. Even New Zealand and Australia gained control of German Pacific island territories German Samoa, German New Guinea, and Nauru. Various states came out of the defeated Austro-Hungarian Empire, including Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, The Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and the Kingdom of Romania. Of course, revolution destroyed the Russian Empire before the conclusion of the war, resulting in the independence of Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. Poland was constructed of territories lost by Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian Empires.

Socialist Resistance to World War I

Like all wars, there was resistance to World War I. A group that would have been well positioned to resist the outbreak of the war was the socialist movement. However, in August 1914, various socialists in Britain, France, Germany, and Austro-Hungary sided with their national governments in participating in World War I (Partington, 2013). For some context, the Second International was a loose federation of socialist groups which arose out of the collapse of the First International in 1876 over debates related to anarchy led by Bukharin. Between its founding in 1889 to the outbreak of World War I, the Second International saw success in terms of rising standards of living for workers, mass popularity, and electoral success that brought socialists into various governments. One the eve of the war, there were three million socialist party members in Germany, one million in France, and a half million in Great Britain and Austria-Hungary respectively (Nation, 1989). The German Socialist Party was the largest party in the the German legislature. Even in the United States, where socialism was less popular, socialist candidate Eugene Debs garnered 900,000 votes in his 1912 presidential bid (Hochschild, 2011). During this time period, socialists of the Second International certainly had opportunities to debate war, as there was the Balkan Wars, Boer Wars, Italy’s invasion of Libya, and war between Russia and Japan. However, the international failed to develop a cohesive anti-war strategy. As World War I approached, socialists made some efforts to organize against it. For instance, in July 1914 socialists organized modest anti-war protests and there were strikes in St. Petersburg (Nation, 1989) and strikes involving over a million workers in Russia earlier in the year. In July 1914, socialist leaders such as Kerrie Hardie, the working class Scottish socialist parliamentarian from Great Britain, Jean Jaures, the French historian and parliamentarian from the French Section of the Workers International, and Rosa Luxemburg, the Jewish Polish Marxist theorist from the German Socialist Party (SPD), met in Brussels for a Socialist Conference to discuss the impending war. Hardie vowed to call for a general strike should Britain enter a war. Jaures spoke before 7,000 Belgian workers calling for a war on war. Unfortunately, Jaures was assassinated in Paris shortly after this meeting by a nationalist zealot. Nevertheless, there were trade union and leftist organized marches in Trafalgar Square in London against the war, where Hardie again called for a general strike against war (Hochschild, 2011). Despite these agitational efforts, the fate of the international was sealed when on August 4th the German SPD voted for emergency war allocations. Socialists in other European countries followed suit, adopted a “defensist” position in which they opted to suspend class struggle in the interest of defending their nations (Nation, 1989). Only 14 of 111 SPD deputies voted against war allocations (Hoschild, 2011). The fact that the majority of socialists supported the war shattered The Second International, which over the course of the war saw the decline of socialist party membership. For instance, Germany’s SPD lost 63% of its membership between 1914-1916 (Nation, 1989). With millions of members in all of the belligerent countries, positions of political power, and union support, socialists had the power to stop the war. Putting nationalism before internationalism was one of the greatest failures of socialists.

Rosa Luxemburg

Not all socialists agreed with the defensist position and during the course of the war they formed an small opposition within the Second International, a segment of which would eventually became the Third International and Communist Party. This opposition had diverse views, ranging from the Menshevik position that socialists should call for neither victory nor defeat of imperialist powers to Lenin’s position of revolutionary defeatism. As her SPD counterparts were calling for war allocations, Rosa Luxemburg called a meeting at her apartment to oppose the war and strategize how to shore up an anti-war opposition within the party. After this meeting, Karl Liebknecht campaigned around Europe with the slogans that “The Main Enemy is at Home”, “Civil War Not Civil Truce” and echoing Jaures, a call to “Wage War Against War.” They shared a further left position in the party that the only way to end the war was to make revolution. However, both Luxemburg and Liebknecht were arrested in February 1915 (Nation, 1989).

Another early mobilization of socialists against the war was a Women’s International Conference first proposed by Inessa Armand, representing the left faction of the anti-war socialists and organized by Clara Zetkin, who was a centrist within the anti-defensist opposition. Zetkin’s centrist anti-defensist position emphasized peace over making revolution (Nation, 1989). After writing An appeal to Socialist Women of All Countries, Zetkin organized the March 1915 Women’s International Conference in neutral Berne, Switzerland for anti-war socialist women. Although she was not as quick to place blame on the socialists for supporting their governments nor emphasize the need for revolution, Clara Zetkin had a long history of anti-war credentials. She was the secretary of the Women’s Socialist International and which she founded in 1907. She was also one of the founders of International Women’s Day. She was a vocal opponent of British war against Boers in South Africa, articulating this position on a May Day speech in 1900. Later, she was an opponent of the First Balkan War and warned that it could develop into a war between greater European powers (Partington, 2013).

Clara Zetkin

The Women’s International Conference was attended by 28 delegates from 8 countries, who developed resolutions on such things as an immediate end to the war, peace without humiliating conditions on any nation, and reparations for Belgium. A manifesto based upon the conference was published later in June. Again, slogans such as “war on war” and “peace without conquest or annexations” were called for. The role of financial interests such as the arms industry was spotlighted as well as how capitalists used patriotism to dupe workers into fighting in the war and weakening socialism. Russian delegates voted to amend this resolution to clearly blame socialists who had collaborated with capitalist governments and called for women to join illegal revolutionary association to advance the overthrow of capitalism. This amendment was rejected as it was viewed as divisive and called for illegal activity. The British delegation added a amendment that condemned price increases and wage decreases during the war and which welcomed other anti-war activists to join them in struggle. The second part of this resolution was not passed (Partington, 2013). The conference was significant because it was the first anti-war conference attended by representatives from belligerent nations. The conference also set the stage for the Zimmerwald conference, which sought to better organize the opposition within the Second International towards ending the war, reforming the international, or abandoning it (Nation, 1989).

The Zimmerwald Conference began on September 11, 1915 in a small swiss village of Zimmerwald under the auspices that it was the meeting of an Ornithological Society. The conference was attended by 38 individuals from 11 countries. The conference is more famous for its male attendees such as Trotsky, Lenin, Zinoviev, Radek, and Martov. However, several women attended including Henriette Roland-Holst a poet and Social Democratic Party member from the Netherlands, Angelica Balanoff of the Italian Socialist Party, Bertha Thalheimer and Minna Reichert of the SPD in Germany. Henriette Roland-Holst went on to oversee the creation of Der Verbote, a journal which served as a mouthpiece for the ideas of the conference. Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg were in prison at the time. The conference manifesto blamed the cause of the war on imperialism, demanded an immediate end to the war, peace without annexations, and the restoration of Belgium. Clara Zetkin was actually against the conference because she viewed it as sectarian. A point of contention at the conference was the nature of self-determination. Lenin and the Bolsheviks supported self-determination for oppressed nationalities. Rosa Luxemburg, not in attendance, felt that this was a distraction and that national liberation was impossible under imperialism. Lenin argued that national struggle complimented socialist struggle. Another point of contention was whether or not to break with the Second International. Since defenism was still the majority position among socialists, most members of the opposition feared breaking with the international as it would mean being part of a smaller, less viable organization. Rosa Luxemburg disagreed that it was a matter that the organization should decide from within, but should be a worker initiative (Nation, 1989).

The socialist movement continued to debate strategies and the nature of the war throughout the war. As the war continued, anti-war actions increased. For instance, in July 1916, 60,000 soldiers died in a single day at the Battle of Somme. In the first six months of 1916 alone, here were one million war casualties. It is unsurprising that in May 1916, 10,000 people protested in Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. The protest was organized by Rosa Luxemburg’s socialist organization, The Spartacist League. There were also strikes and demonstrations in Leipzig that year (Nation, 1989). In 1916, 200,000 people signed a petition for peace in Britain (Hochschild, 2011). Of course, the most dramatic event was the strike of workers at the Putilov Arms factory on the 3rd of March, 1917. This spiraled into a general strike in Petrograd, the mutiny of the army, and the abdication of the throne after three hundred years of Romanov rule. The February Revolution in Russia resulted in a Provisional Government. In the months that followed, there were mutinies in France and Germany, general strikes and protests across Europe (Nation, 1989). Following the February revolution, 12,000 Londoners rallied in solidarity with the Russians and activists began organizing soviets. In April 1917, there were mutinies in France, wherein soldiers waved red flags, sang the international, and in one case, soldiers hijacked a train and went back to Paris. French troops were diverted from the front to French cities to quell rebellion. At least 30 French army division created soviets. In Russia, the army fell apart as a million soldiers deserted (Hochschild, 2011). The February revolution strengthened the Bolshevik position within the Zimmerwald left, but it took a second revolution, with the Bolsheviks assumption of power to end the war, as the Provisional Government lacked the political will to exit the war (Nation, 1989).

February Revolution in Petrograd

The new Bolshevik government announced an armistice on December 15, 1918 and sent a delegation to meet the Germans at Brest-Litovsk fortress. The delegation consisted of a woman, soldier, sailor, peasant, worker, and at least two Jewish men, all chosen to represent the new society in Russia. The peasant in the delegation, Stashkov, was pulled from the street randomly, but happened to be a leftist. He had never had wine before the meeting and had the unfortunate habit of calling his fellow delegates “barin” or master. The female delegate, Anastasia Bitsenko, made the German delegates, all from the higher echelons of German society, uneasy, as she had just returned from Siberia after a seven year imprisonment for assassinating the Russian Minister of War. Together, these enemies in terms of class, ideology, and war feasted uneasily in honor of the Russian exit from the conflict (Hochschild, 2011). The terms of this exit were settled by a peace treaty in March 1918, which set the conditions of Russia’s exited the World War I at the cost of territorial concessions to Germany. The armistice between the countries antagonized Russia’s allies (Nation, 1989). Russia’s end to the war meant that Germany could devote an addition half million soldiers to the Western Front. It also resulted in more unrest in the warring countries as activists were emboldened by the Russian revolution and immiserated by the ongoing war. Throughout the war, Germany was blockaded by the Allies, which led to food shortages. German troops were reduced to eating turnips and horse meat and civilians ate dogs and cats. Real wages in Germany declined by half during the war. In turn, German submarines downed over 5,000 allied merchant ships, sending 47,000 tons of meat to the bottom of the sea in the first half of 1917 alone. By 1918, war cost made up 70% of Britain’s GDP. 100,000 workers protested in Manchester against food shortages. In July, rail workers in Britain went on strike. Even the police went on strike for two days, as 12,000 London police walked off the job (Hochschild, 2011).

Lenin had pinned his hopes on revolution spreading across the world. Considering the mutinies, desertions, strikes, and protests in 1918, this does not seem entirely far fetched. British military officials even considered making peace with Germany as a way to contain the threat of the Russian spreading revolution elsewhere. March 1918 saw the founding congress of the Communist Party and the Third International, the final break from the Second International. That same year, there were soviets formed in Germany and a sailor mutiny wherein the sailors raised the red flag. 400,000 Berlin workers went on strike in January 1918 demanding peace, a people’s republic, and workers rights (Hochschild, 2011). Revolutions were attempted in Bavaria, Hungary, Braunschweig, and Berlin. Revolutionaries captured the Kaiser’s palace in Berlin and declared a socialist republic. The Berlin Revolution led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebnecht’s Spartacist League was crushed by Social Democratic Party of Germany in alliance with the German Supreme Command (Nation, 1989). Both revolutionaries were captured, tortured, and executed. The SPD, which had led the member parties of the Second International to side with their belligerent governments, went on to crush other uprisings across Germany, taking its place in the Weimar Republic that followed. Suffice to say, the chasm in the socialist movement that began in 1914 had become an irreparable trench of millions dead and the graves of revolutionaries.

Other Resistance to World War I:

The debates and division within the the socialist movement is certainly an interesting aspect of how war was resisted or failed to be resisted. However, there were many other groups involved in resisting World War One. Another natural source of resistance against World War I might have been anarchists, however, like the socialist movement, the anarchist movement split over how to react to the war. A number of leading anarchists, including Peter Kropotkin, signed the Manifesto of the Sixteen in 1916, which argued that victory over the Central Powers was necessary. The manifesto encouraged anarchists to support the Allies. Kropotkin’s support of the Allies may have been the result of a desire to defend France as a progressive country with a revolutionary tradition. To him, defense of France was a defense of the French Revolution. His approach to the war was pragmatic. He felt that any uprising against the war would be small and easily crushed and that there was a responsibility to defend the country from aggression. He viewed Germany as particularly militaristic. The year that the Manifesto of the Sixteen was written was particularly brutal and saw the beginning of British conscription (Adams and Kinna, 2017).

Not all anarchists were as lost on the issue of war as Kropotkin, for instance, Emma Goldman believed that the state had no right to wage war, drafts were illegimate and coercive, and wars were fought by capitalists at the expense of workers. As the United States moved towards war in 1916, she began using her magazine, Mother Earth, to espouse anti-war ideas. Once the United States entered the war, she launched the No-Conscription League. Subsequently, her magazine was banned and she was arrested on June 15, 1917 along with her comrade, Alexander Berkman (War Resistance, Anti-Militarism, and Deportation, 1917-1919, n.d.). Before she was arrested, Goldman had planned on curtailing anti-conscription speeches, as speakers and attendees of her meetings were harassed by soldiers and police. She was arrested for violating the Selective Service Act, which was passed five days before her arrest. The New York Times covered her arrest and trial, blaming her for two riots that had occurred at her meetings. However, the reports of riots were overblown, as the meetings themselves were peaceful until disrupted by police and soldiers who demanded to see draft registration cards from attendees. Goldman did her best to use the trial as a platform for her ideas, arguing that she didn’t actually tell men not to register for the draft, as according to her anarchist beliefs she supported the right of individuals to make their own choices. She also framed her organizing as part of an American tradition of protest and that democracy should not fear frank debate. Despite her efforts of defending herself and ideas, she was sentenced to the maximum sentence of two years (Kennedy, 1999). Upon serving her sentence at Missouri State Penitentiary, she was deported in December 1919 along with other radicals (War Resistance, Anti-Militarism, and Deportation, 1917-1919, n.d.). Interestingly, Goldman had gained U.S. citizenship when she married Jacob Kershner in 1887, but he had his citizenship revoked in 1909. According to the laws at the time, a wife’s citizenship was contingent on the husband’s. Thus, she was deported based upon the citizenship of her dead husband.

Emma Goldman

European anarcho-syndicalists experienced the same split socialists did, as many came out in support of defensism (Nation, 1989). In the United States, The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was the target of propaganda from the Wilson administration, which claimed that they were agents of the kaiser who were trying to sabotage the U.S. war effort (Richard, 2012). The IWW is an international union with ties to both the socialist and anarchist movements. While not specifically anacho-syndicalist, the IWW was founded several anarcho-syndicalists such as Lucy Parsons and William Trautman. Because the IWW was trying to organize industries important to the war such as mining, lumber, and rubber, they were targeted with Red Scare tactics. To avoid persecution, the leadership of the IWW refrained from taking a public stance against the war, but members were free to critique the war. This tactic did not work and in September 1917, the Department of Justice raided 48 IWW halls and arrested 165 members, some of whom had not been active for years (Richard, 2012). One of the members who was arrested as Loiuse Olivereau, who at the time was an anarchist IWW secretary. After the raid of an IWW office that she worked at, she went to the Department of Justice to have some of her property returned. Among this property were anti-war fliers, which were a violation of the Espionage Act. Like Goldman, she went to trial and tried to make a political defense. She defended herself and her ideas, arguing that wartime repression and zealous nationalism were not “American” values. She appealed to plurality and nationalism based upon internationalism. In her pamphlets, she had emphasized that men who avoided war were not cowards, but brave for living by their convictions. The media gave little attention to her arguments, instead portraying her as a radical foreigner with dangerous ideas, as Goldman had been portrayed (Kennedy, 1999). IWW members who were not arrested faced vigilante justice from lynch mobs. For instance, Frank Little was disfigured and hung from a railroad trestle in Butte, Montana. In 1919, Wesley Everest was turned over to a mob by prison guards in Centralia, Washington. He had his teeth knocked out with a rifle butt, was lynched three times, and shot. The coroner deemed the death a suicide (Richard, 2012).

In addition to anarchists and socialists, suffragists were another group of activists with an interest in anti-war organizing. In addition to the March 1915 socialist women’s conference, there was a much larger women’s gathering at The Hague in the Netherlands. April 1915 conference brought over 1300 delegates together and was organized by suffragists under the leadership of Jane Addams. It was mostly attended by middle class, professionals though representatives from trade unions and the Hungarian Agrarian union was also in attendance. Like the socialist movement, the suffragist movement was divided between those who supported their governments and those who were anti-war. For instance, the International Suffrage Alliance did not support the Hague conference. Invitations to the conference put forth the position that the war should be ended peacefully and that women should be given the right to vote. Attendance was difficult, since it meant crossing war torn countries or asking for travel documents, which was often denied (Blasco and Magallon, 2015). Attending the conference was itself illegal and all 28 delegates from Germany were arrested upon their return. 17 of the 20 British delegates were refused passage by ship when they tried to leave Britain (Hochschild, 2011). Like the socialist conference, the The Hague conference made a resolution that territorial gains or conquests should not be recognized, though it put the onus of ending the war on neutral countries rather than working people. There was no call for a “war on war” but for mediation, justice, and diplomacy through a Society of Nations. Some of the points of this resolution were adopted by Woodrow Wilson in his 14 Points (Blasco and Magallon, 2015).

The sentiment of The Hague Conference, which focused on progressive internationalism, was echoed by the Women’s Peace Party before the war. In 1914, 1,500 women marched against World War I in New York. Fannie Garrison Villard, Crystal Eastman, and Madeleine Z Doty organized the first all-female peace organization, The Women’s Peace Party. After the end of the war, the Women’s Peace Party became the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (Jensen, 2014). Despite the peaceful orientation, the WPP also promised to defend America from foreign enemies and worked to get Woodrow Wilson elected in 1916. They also framed their peace work as a matter of maternal duty as nurturers. Irrespective of their patriotic politics, they were critiqued for being too nurturing or feminine, as this was viewed by men as having a negative and weakening effect on the public sphere (Kennedy, 1999). At the same time, it seems contradictory that a peace party would support national defense. However, supporting the U.S. war effort might be viewed as an extension of the interest of middle class white women in finding increased state power through voting. The war sharpened the differences between radical and reformist suffragists. The New York State Suffragist Party argued that the Silent Sentinels protest outside of the White House was harassing the government during a time of national stress (Women’s Suffrage and WWI, n.d). Even before the United States entered the war, The National American Woman Suffrage Association wrote a letter to Woodrow Wilson pledging the services of two million suffragists. The letter appeared in the New York Times and promised that the suffragists would remain loyal to the war effort by encouraging women to volunteer in industries left vacant by men at war and collect medical supplies and rations (The History Engine, n.d.). The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) engaged in patriotic volunteering, but they did not abandon organizing for the vote. NAWSA’s president, Carrie Chapman Catt was a pacifist, but supported the war effort by promoting Liberty Loans, Red Cross drives, and War Savings Stamps. Around the country, suffragists supported the war effort by planting victory gardens, food conservation, Red Cross and volunteering. The National Women’s Party took a more radical approach, and during the war 200 of them picketed the White House and were arrested, went on hunger strikes, and were forcibly fed. In the United States, women finally won the right to vote in 1920, but this mostly impacted white women as Native American women were not U.S. citizens until 1924 and first generation Asian women were not granted the right to vote until after World War II (Jensen, 2014).

Silent Sentinels who protested outside the White House during WWI

The divide in the suffragist movement is illustrated in the Pankhurst family. Sylvia Pankhurst, was a British suffragist who with her mother Emmaline and sisters, Christabel and Adela, founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) (Miles and McGregor, 1993). Emmaline Pankhurst, the matriarch of the family, became engaged in politics after working with poor women to collect data on illegitimate births. She noted that many of these births were caused by rape and also took issue with the fact that female teachers in Manchester made less than their male counterparts. Thus, sexual assault and the wage gap have a long been observed as social problems by feminists. The WPSU did not allow male members, though they infiltrated meetings of the Liberal Party to demand voting rights. The WSPU eventually split over the issue of whether or not they should support candidates. Emmaline Pankhurst was against this, as all of the candidates at the time were male. Charlotte Despards, a novelist, charitable organizer, Poor Law Board member, and proponent of Indian and Irish independence, was for supporting candidates, as she was a supporter of the Independent Labor Party. Despards went on to found the Women’s Freedom League (Hochschild, 2011). Again, male membership and supporting male candidates are still issues that modern feminist groups consider.

The WSPU was the most radical of the British suffragist groups and it engaged in arson, window breaking, and bomb attacks (Miles and McGregor, 1993). The WSPU burned the orchid house at Kew Gardens, smashed a jewel case at the Tower of London, burned a church, and carved out “No Votes, No Golf” on a golf green (Hochschild, 2011). Due to these activities, suffragists were imprisoned and Sylvia herself was arrested nine times between 1913 and 1914. To protest imprisonment, they went on hunger strikes and had to be forcibly fed. Sylvia was expelled from the WSPU for socialist beliefs and founded the East London Federation of Suffragists. Despite their extreme tactics, Emmaline and Christabel became less radical at the outbreak of World War I and ceased their radical tactics, instead supporting the war and handing out white feathers to shame men to who didn’t enlist to fight (Miles and McGregor, 1993). The eldest sister, Christabel traveled to the United States to drum up support for the war. Most British suffragists supported the war effort, which may seem surprising as many had earlier denounced war, gender essentializing it as a masculine endeavor. This turn towards national defense over voting rights was strategic, as it did offer mainstream legitimacy to suffragists who had otherwise been arrested and persecuted. Even the author Rudyard Kipling had expressed concern that the women’s suffrage movement weakened Britain, making it less prepared for war. The WSPU organized a march of 60,000 women, though not against war. The march was to encourage women to buy shells. Perhaps due to their compliance in the war and part because the Russian revolution had granted universal suffrage, women were granted the right to vote in Britain in 1919 (Hochschild, 2011).

As for Sylvia, one of the few anti-war suffragists, she organized ELFS to set of free clinics to mothers and children, a free day care, a Cost Price restaurant, and a toy factory for fundraising. She supported strikes against conscription, the Defense of the Realm Act, protested the execution of James Connolly, and her group was the only British suffragist organization which continued to organize for the vote during the war (Miles and McGregor, 1993). She had even suggested that an anti-war march of 1,000 women should occur in the no man’s land between enemy lines. Throughout the war, she documented the suffering of women, noting that women were forced out of hospital beds to make room for soldiers or struggle to survive on the military pay of their husbands. The wives of deserters received no pension from the government and women were subjected to curfews to avoid cheating and faced imprisonment if they had a venereal disease and had sex with a soldier (Hochschild, 2011).

Sylvia Pankhurst

In 1916, the organization changed its name to the Workers Suffrage Federation and in 1918 to the Workers Socialist Federation. It was the first British organization to affiliate with the Third International and she herself articulated that while women could win the vote under capitalism, they could achieve liberation. She was arrested for sedition in 1920 for urging British sailors to mutiny over poor conditions and for dock workers to resist loading arms to be used by Russian counterrevolutionaries. While in prison, the Workers Socialist Federation joined the Communist Party. She never joined the Communist Party herself and was critical of the New Economic Program (Miles and McGregor, 1993). Sylvia never joined the party, but paid a visit to the Soviet Union, which impressed her. She continued her activism throughout her life, warning about the rise of fascism and drawing attention to Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. She eventually moved to Ethiopia, where she died at the age of 74.

Conclusion:

Resistance to World War I in many ways seems like a series of stunning betrayals. The socialists, which had the power to stop the war, sided with their national governments at the cost of millions of lives. The hardships of war created the conditions for unrest in many countries, but it was only in Russia where revolution was successful (at a high cost and with lasting consequences to the shape the new society). Suffragists, like socialists, sided with their national governments. This Faustian deal, in some ways, secured the right to vote. Today, women can vote to send women to kill other women in war, just as socialists voted for the money to arm workers to fight other workers. Anarchists were also fractured by the war, when this group seemed the most ideologically unlikely to side with government war mongering! At the same time, activists of all of these groups made hard choices. Anti-war socialists found themselves unable to organize workers early in the war due to their small numbers and the swell of nationalism and prejudices. Any activist organizing against the war faced imprisonment in beligerant countries, and Emma Goldman, Clara Zetkin, and Rosa Luxemburg among many more were arrested. Some activists faced mob justice and death. Still, there are some lessons to be drawn from all of this. A major lesson is the importance of unwavering internationalism. Another lesson is to take a long, principled view of power. Suffragists abandoned their organizing in the interest of legitimacy and national power. In doing so, they made powerful allies, but they also took their place in the state apparatus that oppresses of women. So too, socialists, who enjoyed popularity and a share of state power, crushed other socialists and supported the violent, senseless slaughter of workers to maintain their place in capitalism. Activists should always stand against imperialism and in solidarity with all of the oppressed people of the world. Doing this may mean standing in the minority or at the margins of history making, but it may also mean keeping alive the idea that a better world is possible and the ideas with the power to build movements that make this happen.

The Gender Question: Unpacking

My Pronouns

H. Bradford

10/21/18

Wednesday October 17th was the first International Gender Pronouns Day. The goal of the day is to raise awareness of gender pronouns, including referring to people by their preferred pronouns and normalizing asking about the pronouns. In activist circles, this is increasingly becoming commonplace. Recently, both of my workplaces asked me for my preferred gender pronouns. But, I can remember just a few years ago when I was asked for the first time to publicly announce my pronouns. This is a reflection of how I felt and my own gender journey.

The first meeting that I was asked to use my preferred gender pronouns caught me off guard. I felt afraid and unsure of what to say. I knew what the expected answer was…she/her/hers….and I felt afraid to say anything but the pronouns that would match my outward appearance. I didn’t answer at all. Meeting after meeting, I didn’t answer. I dreaded when it was my turn to share. I would simply say my name and something else (for instance what group I was in or why I was there), avoiding the question or trying to bury the question in other information. Only a few times was I called out. “Oh, you forgot to share your pronouns!” I wanted the question to go away. It seemed like some hokey, liberal trend to be inclusive- but really, it felt like an interrogation into the walled up parts of myself. I have wrestled with gender identity, but came to no conclusions or worse, no plan of action. Thus, I have slid through life avoiding the question and relegating it to some condemned, musty, walled off part of myself that could be attended to when I had the time, courage, or emotional safety. The “gender question” asked at activist meetings forced it out of the dark corner that I had been avoiding. I resented that. No one shines a light in my haunted house!

Mn State Fair Haunted House

For some context, I have felt alienated by my femaleness. It started sometime around the 5th grade. I didn’t want to grow up to be female…or the “w” word. I didn’t want breasts or a period. I didn’t want curves or for people to see me as a woman. I didn’t want to become…such an alien thing. It is a feeling that has hung around. I could provide more details or examples, as often creating a narrative of lifelong questioning is necessary for legitimacy. But, I don’t care to and legitimacy does not have to be rooted in history and long stories. In any event, despite feeling un-female, I wondered what alternative existed for me. What else could I be and how could I become it? Despite these feelings, I have generally presented myself in a feminine way (to some degree), with makeup, shaved body, and long hair. Thus, to question or feel disgusted by and alien from my body and biological/social lot seemed disingenuous. Worse, when I have talked to some people close to me over the years, the reactions have been that I must be mentally ill or just trying to be trendy….because gender dysphoria is cool. This left me feeling a bit lost and defeated. By my 30s I tried not to think too deeply about it. That is…until that pesky question kept coming up!

I started to test out answers. Mostly, when it came up, I said I go by she/her/hers and they/them/theirs. No one cared. The question moved on to the next person. This was nice and gave me more confidence. No one stopped the whole thing and said, “Wait! You are NOT they, them, theirs…. you are just trying to be trendy here! Call the gender police.” Or, “They, them, theirs is for MORE androgynous looking people. Clearly you wear makeup and have long hair. You are not constructing gender properly.” In the few instances where I felt that I needed to give an explanation, I said that I was gender questioning. By cautiously answering…but being met with zero reaction or questioning, I began to feel more comfortable. These questions felt invasive and loaded at first, but it turned out it was not an inquisition.

What am I? I feel weird calling myself a woman. It just seemed so…not me. It seems like a special title reserved for some other people. I didn’t ask for this body. There are parts of it I would be happy to be rid of. At the same time, I think she/her/hers is appropriate for me. Despite how I might feel about myself, the world sees me as female. I am treated like a woman. Each time I fear for my safety or am treated as “less than” a man, I am living a female experience in a female body (I don’t mean this to reify biological gender, but as a shared experience of oppression). I feel safer in female spaces than in spaces dominated by men and I feel like I do not behave or present in a fashion that is gender queer enough for trans or non-binary spaces. I present myself in a “feminine” way. I have been subjected to and subjugated by female gender norms. I fear aging. I fear becoming too ugly or too fat. My presentation of self is still very much governed by patriarchal gender norms for women. At the same time, gender is socially constructed. There is no feminine. Long hair and makeup can be masculine, androgynous, feminine, or really anything or nothing at all. Despite the arbitrary nature of these rules, my presentation has social meaning that is associated with femaleness. I could reject this, but there is no real way to reject this as reconstructing gender usually hinges upon gender tropes. Binary gender is such a part of our cognitive landscape that it is hard to escape. Inevitably, it depends upon rejecting what is viewed as masculine, feminine, mixing up these characteristics, or inventing something androgynous (which is often stereotyped as thin and skewed towards masculine). She/her/hers is also useful in showing solidarity with women. I am a feminist. Maybe I don’t always feel like a woman, but I live in this world perceived and treated as one. I experience oppression as a woman and she/her/hers can be useful gender shorthand for these experiences and my solidarity with those who also experience this.

Although I am she/her/hers….I am also not these things. It feels like gender is Schroedinger’s cat, which both IS and ISN’T. Both things exist in the box that is myself. I am female in body and experience, but also not these things, both because there is no female body and universal female experience and because I feel alien from the female parts of me (whatever those may be). This is hard to explain. To address the first aspect of my non-femaleness, well, femaleness does not really exist. What is female? Breasts, certain hormones, certain chromosomes, vaginas, or other biological characteristics? Some females have some of these characteristics and not others, have all of these to varying degrees, or have some of these in some parts of life and not in others. I have some biological markers of being female, but I do not necessarily want them, and being female is more than just biological rules and boundaries (which are themselves socially determined). I would be happy to not have breasts, for instance. I have always hated them. I am actually really happy that mine are small, since I really don’t want these female associated appendages hanging off my body. They serve no purpose in my life. I have no intention of breast feeding, which seems like a body horror, nor enjoy their utility in sexual attraction. Yes, I called it a body horror. I feel that chest feeding can be wonderful and nourishing for OTHERS who are not alienated by their bodies, but to me existing in this body, the very thought of it seems like a torturous humiliation. In this sense, and others that I won’t share, I am very much not a woman.

Femaleness is also related to gender roles, expected behaviors, and social position. Where do I fit in to that? Sure, I think that I am “feminine”, but I think that this is one facet of who I am and more or less just a part of the full constellation of human traits that everyone shares to varying degrees. I am not “feminine” in some ways, in that I don’t necessarily follow female gender roles. I am not particularly nurturing, not at all motherly or maternal, am emotionally reserved, not much for traditional roles of care giving and cleaning, independent and self-reliant, not romantic, generally more rational and scientific than spiritual or emotional, etc. Once again, these are characteristics that get divied up between masculine and feminine, but are not inherently either. Still, I think that bodily, emotionally, and socially, I have traits that I feel are masculine, feminine, and androgynous. I don’t feel a close affinity with my femaleness, but I don’t entirely reject it either. Thus, I really like they, them, their as gender pronouns. I also like to go by H. as well as Heather, since I think it represents my non-binary self. Heather is very feminine in our society. I used to hate my name because of it. However, I am trying to accept that Heather is just a plant. It is a flower that grows in rocky, boggy conditions- with no innate femininity, masculinity, or androgyny. The sound of the word Heather is not feminine, as people in other countries have similar sounding names which are pegged as masculine- such as Hadir in Arabic speaking countries. I can be Heather and not necessarily be feminine. But, I do enjoy when friends call me H.

Gender is complicated. I don’t have the answers. I consider myself gender questioning because I haven’t arrived at my final destination. I don’t know that I will. There may be times in my life that I embrace my femaleness more. Other times, it may be a source of pain and humiliation. I haven’t always enjoyed getting asked what my pronouns are, but at the very least, I am starting to feel more confident. At this point, I feel confident enough to say that yes, there is a they, them, their part of myself. It doesn’t matter if I don’t look or behave in a non-binary way or reject gender enough. I don’t need to be legitimate in anyone else’s eyes. It is gender that is illegitimate, not me. Even if my feelings ARE the result of being trendy or mentally ill, why stigmatize either? Traditional concepts of gender (and sex) benefit no one but those at the top of our patriarchal, capitalist economic system. As my life progresses, perhaps I will feel bolder and ask to be H. or they, them, their more often. Perhaps not. For now, this is where I am at. Thanks for asking.

Anxious Adventuring: Nationalist Tour Guide

H. Bradford

10/8/18

While visiting Macedonia I decided to go on a day tour to Lake Ohrid. It would have been far cheaper to take a public bus, but I had some worries that perhaps the bus would be overbooked or that I would miss the bus back to Skopje. To make things less stressful, I booked a day tour to Lake Ohrid. Of course, Macedonia does not have an expansive tourist industry, so most day tours are private tours. Private tours are expensive, but they make it easier to learn about different historical sights than I would have learned on my own. Another downside, besides price, is that it can be socially awkward. After all, it means that the guide is your only company ALL day long. That is a lot of social pressure on both parties. Many things could go wrong. What if the guide is weird? What if the guide makes me feel unsafe? What if we simply don’t get along? I don’t often do private tours because of the price and the social component. But, it seemed easier than making a mistake using the bus system in an unfamiliar country for a several hour bus ride that at least online was said to be often sold out… so I booked a guide.

Beautiful Lake Ohrid…

I waited anxiously at my hostel for the guide to arrive. When he arrived, I felt disappointed that it was a man, since it always feels safer to be alone with women. I wasn’t entirely alone though, since he had a driver with him. It made me feel tense, as these two men were to be my company for the day. Oh well. The guide was nice enough…and handed me some brochures about various Macedonian tourist attractions. He gave me an overview of how the day would go and we set off towards our first stop, the mouth of the Vardar river. Along the way, he shared his knowledge of Macedonia, which he was very passionate and knowledgeable about. Based upon his particular slant on the information he shared, it became clear that he was….very nationalist.

First stop…Vardar River (one of many photos of me that day…)

The guide, who I will call “A.” strongly believed that Macedonia was indeed the homeland of Alexander the Great and that the people of Macedonia, while Slavs, had actually mixed with the ancient Macedonian population. He substantiated this belief with stories of how some villages continue to conduct group weddings. He believed that group weddings were a custom modeled after Alexander the Great’s mass wedding held in Susa wherein marriages were arranged between Alexander and his officers and Persian noblewomen. This was an interesting theory, though there are many reasons to hold collective weddings (for instance, to save time and to share costs). He was a strong advocate for a boycott of the referendum, as he felt that if it passed, Greece would have control over street names, statues, books, school curriculum, stadiums, or even outlaw the use of the name Alexander as a given name. I didn’t quite understand why the referendum would be boycotted rather than simply “vote NO.” Since the failure of the referendum, I now understand that voter turnout needed to be at least 50% for it to be valid. To A., the very idea that the matter would be voted upon was insulting. He felt deeply that not only were Macedonians the inheritors of Alexander the Great’s legacy, Greece had no business telling Macedonia what to do. This was not framed as an anti-Nato or anti-EU sentiment. A. also made no indication that he had a pro-Russian political orientation. His position was, however, a vehemently anti-Greek position. He spoke about the oppression of Slavic people in Greek Macedonia and believed that the majority of this population still spoke Macedonian (it is unknown how many speakers there are, but in 1951 it was 40,000). I nodded along to his assertions, but didn’t know what to say when he went on a tirade about how Alexander the Great was not bisexual or gay and this was a myth propagated by Hollywood. Nationalism, while it has reasonable aspects (yes, Macedonia should have the autonomy to determine its own name and interpretation of history) can also be deeply intolerant, angry, masculine, and homophobic… at least that is the brand of nationalism that I experienced with A.

For my part, I mostly played dumb and asked questions, since that is often the safest way to act out the role of a non-threatening female around angry men. In any event, I did not want to risk upsetting the person responsible for my safety and transportation. The day had many awkward moments, as A. had a very pushy personality. For instance, he insisted that he needed to take my photo at every stop we made. At churches, rivers, lakes, statues, etc. I politely told him many times that I was content to have just a few photos of myself, but he pushed to take my photo at every stop, harassing me with compliments about how I looked. This was uncomfortable, but I lacked any power in the situation to escape this barrage of photos. I did my best to make polite excuses not to take more photos of myself (usually I have the opposite problem that as a solo traveler I have to ask a stranger for a photo or use the self-timer on my camera). This was to no avail and a familiar experience. Consent and boundaries are only dimly understood among most people and part of living and traveling in this world is experiencing situations where these are violated, ignored, or pushed. Likewise, A. was very devoutly Orthodox. When we visited two monasteries, he insisted that I drink the water. I didn’t want to drink the water, since I didn’t trust that it was not going to make me sick (untreated water contains unfamiliar bacteria that he might be used to, but I could get sick from). He pushed me to drink the water, which he asserted was the purest water in the world. I took a small sip to appease him and later found myself pretending to drink the water by cupping it in my hand, putting it to my mouth, but letting it slip through my fingers. When asked about my religious beliefs, I felt it was best to lie- as he was extremely devout in his Orthodoxy. I told him I was Protestant. I don’t think I have ever lied about my atheism. At one point, he told me to light the candles at the monastery. I am not Orthodox, so I felt uncomfortable, but he was so adamant about it, I lit the candle. Then, he quizzed me about what it meant. I had no idea. He said that the candles are lit because of the sins in the world. I said something awkward about darkness and suffering, then moved on to ponder the miraculous dripping bone marrow of John the Baptist.

Things became less socially intense when we arrived at Lake Ohrid. I opted to spent some time alone there and enjoyed blissful social isolation as I strolled around the lake looking for birds and taking in the scenery. At Lake Ohrid, the guide and I parted ways. I appreciate that he was very candid about his political beliefs and I felt that it had been a unique opportunity to speak with someone with strong nationalist views. On the other hand, I was relieved to no longer feel pressured for photographs or to sample water or any other thing that had made me feel uncomfortable during the day. I survived! The ride back to Skopje was less stressful. I had an enjoyable conversation with the more politically moderate driver who was pro-EU and pro-NATO. He was pessimistic about Macedonia’s future and largely indifferent to Greek’s demands, since Macedonia was too weak to resist it and Alexander the Great was not worth celebrating anyway. The driver felt that Macedonia was a unimportant, doomed nation (so he lacked A.’s zealous confidence in Macedonia’s purpose and history). It was interesting to hear this perspective, even if it came across as a dreary pro-Western defeatism. Despite the polar opposite views on Macedonia’s history, both men agreed upon the horrible prospect of “Greater Albania.” When I spoke to a very progressive guide the following day, she also feared Greater Albania. So, oddly, that was the tie that bound the political spectrum- fear of Albanian territorial, economic, and population expansion. I am not sure what to make of that…

My guides often pointed out whenever they saw an Albanian flag…

I think it is both rude and privileged to put down my guide, as he was extremely hard working and passionate about his job. In a group setting, I probably would have felt far less uncomfortable and anxious. He was uncomfortably pushy in some regards and it was emotionally exhausting to try to balance politeness (for safety and a smooth day) and resistance (not wanting to drink unknown water, for instance). I have had experiences like this before while traveling and living, which I have navigated differently depending upon my own perceived power in the situation (which is often little). In any event, as trying as the day felt at some points, it was an opportunity to see and hear nationalism first hand. Despite my support of Macedonian self-determination, on a personal level, nationalism feels smothering, assertive, and intolerant.

I am fairly certain that this AP photo by Thanassis Stavrakis of a Macedonian nationalist is a picture of my tour guide….

Illegal Abortion: Lessons from Romania

by H. Bradford

7/10/18

I recently read Gail Kligman’s The Politics of Duplicity. In the past, I had read parts of the book, drawing from it for my thesis on the topic of abortion in formerly communist countries. In preparation for my upcoming short vacation to Romania, I wanted to read some books about Romanian topics, so I reconnected with the book for that purpose. Reflecting upon the book, there are some lessons that can be drawn from Romania’s abortion experience. Abortion access has been relentlessly attacked and restricted since its legalization in 1973 and Trump’s Supreme Court nominee will certainly be hostile to Roe v. Wade. While the spectre of inaccessible, if not illegal, abortion has haunted America for decades, there is fearful anticipation among activists that a new era of attacks on reproductive rights is upon us. Therefore, Kligman’s book is timely for anyone looking to learn from the historical horrors of illegal abortion.

To provide some context, in 1966 abortion was made illegal in Romania by the communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. Decree 770 made abortion illegal in most cases, spare some medical conditions, age thresholds (40 or 45 depending upon the age), rape, incest, fetal deformity, or having already raised a certain number of children (4-5 depending on the year). Abortion remained illegal until the collapse of Ceausescu’s dictatorship in 1989. During this time period, contraceptives were unavailable in Romania, women were subjected to regular mandatory gynecological exams to monitor pregnancies/abortions/reproductive health, abortion seekers and providers were imprisoned, childless people were fined, homosexuality and adultery was criminalized, and divorce was made difficult to obtain. The state mobilized propaganda, medical institutions, and the criminal justice system towards enforced reproduction in the interest of demographic goals. According to Kligman’s book, this reproductive dystopia was the inspiration of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Although the United States is very different from communist Romania in the 1960s-80s, some important lessons can be drawn from these nightmarish decades.

1.Abortion Does Not End With Illegality:

Despite Romanian’s draconian laws and lack of access to birth control, abortion did not end. Women either found legal channels, such as obtaining an abortion for medical purposes (as some conditions allowed for abortion) or faking a miscarriage or illegal channels, such as willing doctors or underground providers. Most often it was through illegal channels. The option of travel was not available to most Romanian women, but for a privileged minority this was also a means to obtain an abortion. One way or another, women continued to seek abortions. Of course, the ability to seek an abortion was largely dependent upon privilege. Women who knew doctors, had more social networks, had favorable connections to the police or state, more money, or other resources could more easily circumvent the laws. Thus, the burden of illegal abortion hits the most marginalized populations the hardest. It is the poorest and most estranged from social institutions who were forced to reproduce. For example, Kligman (1998) relayed the story of a peasant woman who was awarded a Medal of Maternal Glory for having 10 children. She used the award ceremony as a platform to beg for an extra bed. While she was celebrated for her large number of children, it may very well been for lack of access to an alternative and certainly, this state celebrated choice was not supported by accompanying material resources.

Within the United States, if abortion was made illegal, abortion seekers would continue to have access to it. Women with careers, credit cards, no criminal histories, U.S. passports, and paid vacation time could access abortion in other countries if it was made illegal here. Generally, those with resources such as money and vehicles could travel to states where abortion laws were less restrictive. Those with social networks or living in urban areas, might have access to underground illegal abortion services. Thus, once again, abortion would not disappear, though the limited access would have the greatest impact on poor women, women of color, rural women, women with criminal histories, immigrant women, and those whose access is already severely limited by lack of abortion access and funding. The Anti-abortion movement is inherently a war against the most oppressed members of society. While illegal abortion would certainly be a challenge to educated, “middle class”, mobile, white women, the impact would be deeper felt by those who face multiple oppressions.

Unsafe Abortion:

The illegality of abortion in Romania drove women to seek abortions. Some abortions were performed by doctors looking to supplement their modest incomes and some were performed by those who genuinely wanted to help women. These abortions were made unsafe by the secretive conditions that illegal abortion created. Doctors had to hide their tools, work quickly, and perform abortions in private residences. Others were self-induced or performed by non-professionals. About half of these illegal abortions were performed without harm to the woman. As for the rest, women often found themselves suffering complications from the herbs, plants, toxins, or objects used to perform the abortion. This created the hard choice between seeking medical help and risking criminal charges or the possibility of death. Around 60% of women who went to the hospital for pregnancy complications had sought illegal abortion. In all, there was an average of 341 deaths per year from abortion complications while abortion was illegal in Romania. Illegal abortion is the death sentence for some women.

Maternal death can also be expected if abortion were to be made illegal in the United States. There are some key improvements in the United States compared to Romania. For one, abortion medicine is more advanced. In Romania, abortions were only performed by curettage, as vacuum aspiration was unavailable before 1989. Mifepristone had not yet been invented, so medical abortion was also unavailable (misoprostol the other drug used to induce abortion had been invented but would not have been available in Romania). The lack of abortion technology made abortion less safe in Romania than if abortion became illegal in the United States. Nevertheless, if abortion were illegal in the United States, abortion seekers and providers would still face tough choices if complications arose. Because doctors in the United States are better paid than those in Romania and their education comes at a steep cost, fewer might be incentivized by earning extra money than those in communist Romania were. This may put women in the hands of those who have less access to abortion medicine/knowledge. Illegality means less regulation, oversight, uniformity, accreditation, sanitary conditions, and more dangers. This isn’t to argue that only medical professionals are capable of providing safe abortion. There were certainly Romanian women who obtained safe abortions from non-medical providers whose folk knowledge of plants and good fortune were enough to end a pregnancy. However, illegal abortion creates more unknown variables that can contribute to a lack of safety.

Criminality:

In Romania, both women and doctors were imprisoned for seeking/performing abortions. Time in prison was generally one to three years. However, some repeat offenders found themselves in prison for longer. Even those who facilitated abortion were imprisoned, such as the girlfriend of a doctor who was imprisoned for one year without a change of clothes. She was believed to have hosted the abortion in her apartment. Doctors who performed illegal abortions could lose their medical license, or at the very least, had to work in another area of medicine.

If the anti-abortion movement in the United States believes that abortion is murder, then it follows that abortion must carry with it some sort of penalty. In the U.S. the penalty for murder is often life imprisonment and sometimes capital punishment. Those who argue that abortion is murder rarely argue for the same punishment as murder, which is odd, as it indicates to me that they do not believe it is actually murder or that if it is murder, it is a different kind of murder. Why is it different? And, if it is different, it concedes that a fetus is not the same as a born human, for which the punishment is the harshest among all crimes. But, supposing that abortion is made illegal but the punishment is more minor, such as a few years in prison. The United States has the largest prison population in the world. 22% of all of the prisoners in the world are in the United States. Illegal abortion could potentially add many people to our prison system, as one in three women have had an abortion. What would society be like if one in three women were imprisoned? The United States has 30% of the world’s female prison population. African Americans make up 40% of the United States prison population, despite the fact that they are 13% of the general population. Criminalizing abortion, like criminalizing anything in this country, disproportionately impacts people of color.

Unwanted Children:

One outcome of illegal abortion in Romania was unwanted children. After all, not all women could successfully access illegal abortion. Many of these children found themselves on the streets or were put into overcrowded, underfunded orphanages. Because of unsanitary medical practices and lack of transparency/policy regarding HIV, some of these orphans contracted HIV. After the collapse of communism in Romania, the Western Media broadcasted the images of underweight, despondent, dirty, neglected children in Romanian orphanages, revealing and perhaps making a spectacle of the horror of their abuse. Romanian society failed to care for the children that women were forced to birth. I doubt the United States would do much better.

Romanian society had some advantages over the United States when it comes to the care of children. In Romania, retirement age was 57 for women (and 55 upon request). For men, it was 62 or 60 upon request. Therefore, unwanted children or children that parents simply could not care for, could be sent to retired grandparents or other relatives. In the United States, full Social Security benefits begin at 66, but many people feel that they can no longer retire. The pool of retirees who can provide care work for children is smaller as the economy and lack of pension benefits at jobs forces U.S. workers into the job market longer. Romania also offered 112 days of paid maternity leave, a birth bonus, and a 10% stipend for their second child (more for additional children). While these government funds were not sufficient to defray the actual cost of raising a child, at least the government made some effort to provide for families. The United States does not offer free daycare, paid maternity leave, or any additional funds to support families. In this sense, our country is profoundly unequipped to support mothers and children. There are programs for needy families, such as MFIP and food stamps, but only the poorest can access these and this does not resolve problems such as affordable daycare and paid leave, which all working parents need.

Ideology of Gender Oppression:

In the United States, it seems that one of the biggest incubators of the ideology of gender oppression is religion. After all, most anti-abortion groups are religiously affiliated. Because religion has been used to justify homophobia, lack of abortion access, and the oppression of women, it is easy to view religion as the source of gender oppression. However, one lesson from Romania is that religion can be completely absent from public life and the state can still propagate ideologies that justify the oppression of women. Romania, like all communist countries, was an atheist state. Nevertheless, the state created mythologies about nationalism and building communism, in which the role of women was both that of a worker and glorified mother. While the case for illegal abortion is often made on religious grounds in the United States, nationalism, economic prosperity, and even science can be mobilized to oppress women. In Romania, propaganda created a mythology that women were naturally meant to be mothers. That this was what made them the healthiest, happiest, and most productive. Any ideology that states that women are naturally “X” should be a red flag. Women are not naturally anything. Woman is a social category which has divided the world in an unequal gender binary. So, while I write now about women and often discuss women’s rights to abortion, it is important to remember that men and non-binary people also seek abortions. Not all people with uteruses are women. Part of the fight for reproductive rights is the fight to challenge notions of gender or what is natural, since “natural” is a dog whistle for what is expected and enforced. The fight for reproductive rights is not a fight against religion, though some religions are involved in the anti-abortion movement. In a discursive sense, it is also a fight about the very notion of what it means to be a woman. It is a fight against the demographic and economic interests of states, which are invested in the reproduction of workers and soldiers if not the actual upkeep of children.

Culture of Suspicion:

Kligman (1998) noted that Romanian abortion laws created a culture of suspicion. Women were made to have regular gynecological exams. Doctors were mobilized by the state to police the bodies of women. Everyday citizens were recruited by The Securitate to spy on one another. Relationships between couples, neighbors, co-workers, doctors, etc. deteriorated as it was never certain who could be trusted and who could not.

The United States is not the same sort of police state, but because of our political and cultural environment, abortion is still a matter of secrecy and shame. Few people discuss their abortion experience even though abortion is common. If abortion were illegal, this secrecy and shame is likely to increase because of the legal consequence. Therefore, it is important for supporters of abortion to fight the shame. In the arena of discourse, we should never accept that abortion should be rare, that it is shameful, regrettable, or that no one is pro-abortion. I am pro-abortion. If abortion is medicine, then I am as much for abortion as I am for dental treatment, eye exams, cancer treatment, or any other form of medicine. Abortion can be life saving. Abortion is sometimes freedom from poverty or abusive relationships. Like anything, it can be a positive, negative, or neutral experience based upon social and personal circumstances.

Abortion and Abuse

Kligman (1998) did not give as much attention to this topic as it deserves, perhaps because of lack of research in this area. However, she mentioned that in Romania, divorce was hard to obtain and abuse was considered a personal/family matter. Even if a woman sought to escape an abusive situation, survival on a single income and the ability to obtain housing would have been nil. She also wrote that men really did not take responsibility for pregnancy prevention and that it was up to women to obtain an abortion or deal with the consequences of pregnancy. State health propaganda suggested that couples should have sex several times a week. The state fostered a society wherein domestic violence was inescapable by virtue of social norms, lack of resources, enforced pregnancy, and state sanctioned male entitlement to sex.

If abortion were illegal in the United States, victims of domestic violence would similarly find themselves forced to have the children of their abuser. Due to the efforts of the feminist movement, domestic violence is not inevitably viewed as a personal or family matter but a problem related to patriarchy and the exertion of power. Advocates have pushed back against this narrative. Shelters, community responses involving education police and social services, and laws that protect victims from such things as eviction or job loss are some of the victories of the feminist movement which Romanian society did not have. However, illegal abortion would still have an impact on victims/survivors as it would force them to have the children of their abuser and through this connection continue to have to deal with them in courts (for child support, custody, visitation) and in life (if the abuser does have partial custody, visitation). Enforced pregnancy (through rape or sabotage or denial of birth control) is one of many ways that abusers exert control over victims. Illegal abortion is essentially the state’s sanction of sexual abuse.

U.S. Foreign Policy- Exporting Anti-Abortion

One final lesson from Romania is that Western countries were either indifferent or supportive of Ceausescu’s abortion policies. Nixon visited Romania in the early 1970s, Jimmy Carter hosted a visit of Ceausescu in 1978, and the United States looked at Romania as a potential ally due to its independence from the Soviet Union, relations with Israel, and willingness to engage in trade agreements with the west. The suffering of the Romanian people and the restrictive abortion laws mattered very little to the two ruling parties of the United States. This is because ultimately, U.S. economic and political interests as an imperialist power supersede principled concerns about the rights of women. Lip service may be given to these concerns from time to time, but these concerns meet their horizon where US hegemony is challenged.

Our country’s hostility towards abortion has a global impact. One example is the Global Gag rule, which began with Reagan and has been squarely supported by Republicans since. Basically, it means that oversees organizations which receive U.S. aid cannot provide or promote abortion services. I expect that if abortion became illegal in the United States, we would empower and expand restrictions elsewhere. In terms of abortion, the worst offenders, of course, are Republicans, but at the heart of the issue is a shared, underlying view that the United States is exceptional, correct, important, and deserves a disproportionate place in shaping the history of the world and lives of the people of other countries. The United States is not exceptional, or it is only exceptional in its atrocities, war mongering, genocide, racism, mass incarceration, and capacity for immiserating the world. I believe that if abortion became illegal in the United States, the people of the world would help the oppressed women here. In return, it is our duty to demolish U.S. power abroad.

Conclusion:

Illegal abortion seems like a nightmare, but in this nightmarish lens, it is always an Other. It is an exotic, Eastern, communist dystopia that is distant from the United States on account of time, place, and political/economic system. But, the challenges faced by Romanians are some of the same faced in the United States before abortion was illegal and which are faced today where abortion has not yet been legalized. In Romania, the people rose up and killed their dictators. In the United States, social movements also tirelessly worked to legalize abortion and contraceptives. While women might not have the power to “shut things down” when it comes to reproduction (to quote Todd Akin famous rape statement) there is always the power to shut society down through protest, strikes, and civil disobedience. As challenging as it is, it is our best and only hope in rolling back the tide of attacks against reproductive rights.

Deconstructing Duluth’s Demographic Crisis

H. Bradford

4/11/18

On February 24th, the Duluth News Tribune ran an article about Duluth’s impending demographic crisis. I wanted to write a socialist feminist response to this, but never got around to it. Not that I am the authority on socialist feminism, but I am a feminist and a socialist…and I do think about these things…so, why not break it down? Now, whenever I hear the word “demographic crisis” I want to run for the hills, or burn something, or both. Not really, but I think it is one of those sexist, ageist, racist, pro-capitalist concepts that begs to be dismembered. Here is why…

Ageism:

Early into the Duluth News Tribune article, when describing the shifting population of the Duluth region, the aging population is described as problematic.

“If population levels were even across age groups, this wouldn’t be much of a problem. But, as you may have heard, the largest generation in the country’s history is marching into retirement, leaving many jobs vacant just as unemployment levels are bottoming out and productivity growth is stalling (Johnson, 2018).”

It is true that our population is aging, but, one must consider why this is a problem. According to the article, it is a problem because there will not be enough workers to replace those who retire. On the surface, this seems like a problem, as society needs workers to produce things. However, this frames the post-retirement age population as the cause of a social problem. Framing the older population as a “problem” is ageist. It also ignores their labor, as labor does not end when wage labor ceases. Their contributions to society do not cease when they reach the age of 65 (or higher ages for the many people who do not have retirement savings, pensions, or the ability to survive on social security alone). Older adults do unpaid work such as volunteering, caring for grand children, gardening, baking, canning, sharing their knowledge, checking up on one another, and a plethora of other important economic activities that are dismissed because they are unpaid. Just as the invisible, unpaid labor of women is ignored as a natural or unimportant, this invisible labor and its contribution to society is also ignored.

This connects to the socialist feminist concept of social reproduction. Basically, in capitalist society, the labor force must reproduce itself. This can literally mean that the work force must replace itself through biological reproduction, but also means that each worker must sustain themselves through sleep, eating food, washing clothes, maintaining their health, relieving stress, and all the many things that are required to survive and work another day. Typically, women have played an important role in providing the invisible, unpaid labor that keeps the work force …working. Caring for children, giving birth, caring for the elderly, washing clothes, cleaning a home, doing dishes, making meals, grocery shopping, etc. are all important unpaid activities that ensure that capitalism will continue. Of course, older adults who leave the work force also provide some of these services as they are “free” to (my own grandparents made many meals for me, baby sat me, bought me school clothes, taught me information, etc.). Thus, is it really a problem that people grow old? Aging is a natural process. It may happen that we have an aging population, but why is this a problem? Some people might respond that it is a problem because this group requires more care and there are not enough young people to care for them. The article itself argues that it is a problem that there is not enough workers to fill jobs and that productivity will decline.

I am not an expert on matters of aging, but I imagine that the “problem of aging” could be mitigated by providing quality, free health care to people of all ages, along with clean environments, living wages, robust pensions, housing, etc. The aging population might very well “age better” if a high quality of life was ensured for people of all ages. What does it mean to “age well” anyway? I think to most people means the ability to care for one’s self, enjoy a high quality of life, and live independently for as long as possible. If this is what this means, the locus of “aging well” is framed as an individual responsibility and the very human need for care is viewed as burdensome. This concept is very individualistic and puts the rest of society off the hook for taking responsibility of providing and caring for the variable needs of older adults. It is also ageist, as aging well is basically the ability to live as similarly to a young person for as long as possible. Maybe it is okay to be wrinkly, sedentary, crabby, or anti-social. Society is awful. Living through decades of economic ups and downs, cuts to social programs, pointless wars, and the general nonsense of everything deemed meaningful by society might sour a person against living with youthful optimism and vibrancy. After years of being alive, “aging well” might seem like a racket to sell beauty products, skin treatments, fitness memberships, etc.

(This image leads me to believe that aging well has something to do with being white and wealthy. Capitalism doesn’t have resources to spare on caring for the elderly, so make certain you stay healthy with fresh air and bike rides in the country.)

If indeed there is a shortage of workers, there are certainly plenty of people in the world and United States itself. These people might be more inclined to move to this frigid region and provide elder care if this was not low paid, under appreciated service work but unionized with benefits (including retirement plans!), better wages, and better working conditions. A true shortage of workers might require open borders to allow new workers to enter the country, but this would require a move away from our current racist, xenophobic, nationalist, and exploitative immigration policy. The “aging population problem” is not a problem with age, but an ageless problem of capitalism to meet the basic needs of humanity.

Of course, the notion of declining productivity must also be challenged. Why is it a problem when productivity declines? Why must productivity always increase? What does this mean for the environment? When have we produced enough?! Productivity is a problem in capitalism because of the tendency for profits to decline. Because competition lends itself to increased investment in fixed capital and there are human thresholds of how much variable capital can be exploited from workers, profits decline over time. Markets also become saturated as there is only so much people can buy (again because wages only allow so much consumption). When too much is produced and too little is consumed, capitalism falls into a crisis, which Marx called the crisis of overproduction. Therefore, productivity is not necessary good. It is not good for the workers (who must work longer or harder). It is not good for the environment (as it creates waste and overuse of resources). And it is not even good for capitalism, since it lends itself to instability. I think it is important to think against blind productivity and instead think about rational, careful production in the interest of human needs.

Sexism:

Another reason why I dislike the concept of “demographic crisis” is that it is sexist. Although the article only mentions it briefly, increasing birth rates is often suggested as a way in averting the crisis. Even if it is not mentioned in detail in the article, it is implicit in the premise of the argument. If the population is aging and this is a problem, that means that not enough new people are being born. Thus, not only are older adults the problem, the bigger problem is that women are not gestating enough babies. The bodies of women have long been treated as public property, inasmuch as their reproductive power is harnessed for state interests. The fight for reproductive rights is a fight to liberate women from their role as the producer’s of the next generation of soldiers and workers. The birth rate in the United States (according to 2018 CIA World Factbook Information) is 12.5 births per 1000 people. Our birth rate is slightly higher than the UK, Sweden, France, and Australia which all have 12.x births per 1000. The rate is higher than Finland, Canada, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Denmark, which have 10.x births per 1000 people. Our birthrate is certainly greater than South Korea, Japan, and Germany, which range from 8.x to 9.x births per 1000 people. Despite our higher birth rate, there is enormous pressure upon women to reproduce- to the point that the organized movement against abortion has made birth nearly compulsory in many parts of the country due to restricted access to abortion. In many of these countries with lower birth rates, the issue of abortion is far less controversial. Here, anti-choice activists bemoan the loss of millions of fetuses, which they argue contributes to our demographic crisis (fewer workers, fewer students, etc.) At the core of demographic crisis is a demand to control reproduction- because if population is viewed as a resource, women’s bodies are responsible for producing this resource.

In the context of capitalism (and unfortunately many economic systems), population is treated as a resource. Workers need to reproduce so that there are more workers. This leads to a precarious balance. Capitalists do not provide for the reproduction of labor (this has often fallen upon women and families) as this requires an investment in workers. At the same time, workers have to have a basic level of sustenance to continue working and to allow for a new generation. For instance, if a woman works too hard or consumes too few calories, she may stop menstruating. Therefore, workers generally have a basic threshold of exploitation which if reached these workers will no longer be able to survive and reproduce. In the United States in particular, our status as a world power has an economic component and a military component. The military domination of the world is an extension of the economic component, as military might ensures access to markets, thwarts competitors, offers access to capital (for instance natural resources and labor), etc. For the United States to remain an economic and military power, babies must be born. Babies are needed so that there will always be a supply of soldiers and workers. Reproduction is a national interest. I think this contributes to the controversy around abortion and the drive to limit it.

(A piece of art that I created called Capitalism is Built on the Bodies of Women)

As I alluded to in the previous paragraph, capitalism has a contradiction. On one hand, in seeks to increase profit by extracting more surplus value from workers. Because profits decline over time, workers are pressured to work harder and longer. This increased exploitation limits the ability to reproduce labor (to reproduce biologically, but also to maintain a certain level of health as workers). In the United States, not a lot of profit is redistributed towards caring for our existing population (i.e. ensuring the reproduction of labor). We do not offer paid parental leave. We do not have free day cares. There is a shortage of housing. Health care is expensive. The list goes on. The conditions of capitalism are so extreme that 5.8 infants die out of 1000 born. In Japan, two infants die per 1000 births. In Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, there are slightly more than 2 infant deaths per 1000. In the European Union as a whole, there are about 4 deaths per 1000 according to the CIA world Fact Book. Once again, rather than a demographic crisis, our crisis is an inability to care for our population. Certainly, anyone worried about our economic or military strength might begin by tackling the causes of infant mortality. But, this would mean diverting profits towards human needs. Re-thinking profits and capitalism itself would undermine the logic of militarism and nationalism.

Supposing that the United States provided free access to abortion, birth control, all health care, and social conditions favorable to reproduction (paid leave, free day care, adequate housing, etc.) Even if these conditions were met, women have no obligation to reproduce the next generation. They should not be scapegoated for demographic crisis. In the end, it is up to society to creatively adapt to changing populations- not women.

Racism and Classism:

The article concluded that a key to averting Duluth’s demographic crisis is promoting immigration to the city. Regarding this point, Mayor Larson said, “Duluth needs to be a community that is welcoming and open to new experiences, new faces, new ethnicities, new races to solve workforce shortages (Johnson, 2018).” I think that it is generally a positive, feel good conclusion, since well, who doesn’t want Duluth to be a more welcoming city? The mayor suggests working with education and health care partners to attract more diversity to the city. Hmm…alright. What does really this mean?

In a subtle way, the statement hints at what kind of diversity is acceptable in Duluth. I interpret working with education and health care partners to mean attracting diversity by attracting professionals of color. The center of this argument is not “let’s build more low income housing so we can attract all of the African Americans in Chicago or Minneapolis who are on housing waiting lists and house those who already exist in our community!” Duluth DOES have some racial diversity BUT, this diversity is segregated into poor neighborhoods, homeless shelters, and jail. Yet, because they are poor and people of color, this population is not seen as a solution to the “demographic crisis” because they are an OTHER at best and problem at worse. They are those people. Those people who are blamed for crime or making things not like they used to be for white people. This is another problem with the notion of “demographic crisis”- since demographic crisis always refers to the shortage of a desirable population. We have a low income population that would probably be happy to invite friends and relatives and grow if Duluth was a more welcoming, less racist, expanded housing, housing and employers ceased discrimination against criminal backgrounds, day care was expanded, public transportation was more reliable, schools were not segregated and plainly racist, etc.

Truly making Duluth a city for everyone, as the Mayor suggested, would mean changing what Duluth is right now. Right now, Duluth is focused on being a city for business. In particular, it is a city for businesses that serve tourists. Centering the city on the tourist industry makes Duluth a city not for everyone, but for middle class, mostly white people, who have the leisure and money to stay at a hotel or the outdoor gear to enjoy our nature. Duluth can’t be a city for business and for everyone. We CAN be a city that is for everyone that happens to attract tourists, but the reverse is not possible. The reverse is what has made Earned Safe and Sick time so controversial, as segments of the business community that are most opposed to it are those sectors that serve tourists (restaurants and hotels). The reverse has also been what has stalled the Homeless Bill of Rights- because homeless people are a “problem population” not one that should be accounted for in “demographic crisis” and certainly not one that deserves to be treated with basic dignity. After all, they might just spook the customers! If we want to be a city for everyone, then we should start by being a city for workers, for the homeless, for people of color, and all of the oppressed in our community.

Conclusion:

Duluth is just one city. It would be pie in the sky to try to think we can build socialism in a single city. Many of my suggestions require a massive struggle on a national scale to accomplish. I do believe that we have local activists with the talent and audience to contribute to such a national struggle. I am not one of them, but am a small and marginal voice in that struggle. Beyond the national, there are some things that can be done on a local level. We can focus local priorities on meeting human needs and support things such as Earned Safe and Sick Time and the Homeless Bill of Rights. We can challenge the policies of our schools and police to make the city less racist and classist. We can also think against business interests and promote diverting profits towards social good. Beyond these material things, I wrote this because I wanted to challenge the ideological logic of “demographic crisis.” Like many crisis and panics, it is a social construct. Inherent in this constructed crisis is ageism, racism, sexism, nationalism, and classism. There are no population problems. There are only failures of societies to address the needs of populations. It is only through struggle that we will win the means to address these needs.

End the Lies: Activists Confront Crisis Pregnancy Centers in Duluth

H. Bradford

3/24/18

On Thursday, March 22nd, activists gathered at the Women’s Care Center in Duluth, MN to draw attention to Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs). The event was organized by the University of Minnesota-Duluth’s Student Advocates for Choice as part of NARAL’s national End the Lies campaign. The student organized event in Duluth was also attended by members of several local feminist groups, including H.O.T.D.I.S.H. Militia, Feminist Action Collective, and Feminist Justice League. On March 21st and 22nd, similar events were held across the country as part of an effort to expose CPCs. These fake clinics use tactics such as deceptive advertisements, websites, and misinformation to deny abortion and other reproductive health services. The March 22nd protests coincide with NIFLA v. Becerra, a Supreme Court Case which is set to decide whether or not a California law which requires crisis pregnancy centers to post information about abortion and contraceptive services offered by the state and whether or not staff are licensed by the state is constitutional. NIFLA or National Institute of Family Life Advocates has sued the state of California for their right to mislead women as a matter of free speech.

The Women’s Care Center in Duluth was chosen as the site of protest because it is located across the street from the Women’s Health Center, one of six abortion clinics in Minnesota (State Facts About Abortion: Minnesota, 2018). In addition to performing abortions, the Women’s Health Center offers STI testing, cancer screening, a variety of contraceptives, annual gynecological exams, menopause care, and other reproductive health services. The Women’s Health Center has provided abortion and other reproductive health care since 1981 to Duluth, as well as large swaths of northern and central Minnesota and Wisconsin as the nearest abortion provider. In contrast, the similarly named Women’s Care Center was launched in 2012 across the street from the Women’s Health Center (Rupar, 2012). While the Women’s Care Center offers free pregnancy tests, parenting classes, and baby items, it can only be described as an anti-abortion center due to its strategic location, similar name, vague website, and pro-life affiliation. Furthermore, the Women’s Care Center is the annual launching point of the 40 Days of Life Campaign, an annual 40 day anti-choice protest outside of the Women’s Health Center. Although protesters are commonplace outside the Women’s Health Center on clinic days, the 40 Days of Life means that each fall there are larger numbers of protesters outside of the building and that they are there for longer hours.

Unfortunately, Duluth is hardly an exception when it comes to crisis pregnancy centers. As of 2012, there were over 90 crisis pregnancy centers in the state of Minnesota. These fake clinics receive over $2.4 million of state money through the Positive Alternatives Act. The Naral-Pro Choice Minnesota Foundation found that 73% of the CPCs that they investigated provided false medical claims about the association between abortion and breast cancer, 87% lied about the connection between abortion and severe mental health problems, and 67% provided misleading information about the connection between abortion and infertility. None of the CPCs investigated referred women to birth control and 67% provided misleading information about the health risks of birth control (State-Funded Deception: Minnesota’s Crisis Pregnancy Centers, 2012). This is just a small sample of the ways in which CPCs use deception and lies to promote an anti-abortion agenda.

Nationally, CPCs have operated since 1969, when Robert Pearson founded the first center in Hawaii. Pearson created the template which has been used for decades by CPCs across the country. His manual explicitly called upon CPCs to falsely portray themselves as abortion providers to lure abortion seekers away from actual providers. His manual instructed “councilors” to never counsel for contraceptives. In a 1994 speech, he said that a women seeking abortion has no right to information that will help her from killing her baby. Make no mistake, CPCs were founded on a concerted effort to deceive. These fake clinics have flourished in recent decades as they have found support from Focus on the Family and Care Net. They have also obtained state funding through federal “abstinence only” programs, “choose life” license plates, and through tax credits and direct funding allocations (Stacey, n.d.).

With 2,300 to 3,500 Crisis Pregnancy Centers across the country and fewer than 800 abortion clinics, it is vital for activists to fight the tide of shrinking abortion access. To this end, feminists should demand an end to state funding to crisis pregnancy centers and work to educate the public about their deceptive tactics with the demand of increased state oversight. Abortion itself should be destigmatized, state funded, and added to the canon of regular healthcare. It should be safe, legal, and accessible. At the same time, choice cannot exist so long as we live in a society defined by poverty, racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, transphobia, and the myriad of oppressions that divide and immersate us. Choice cannot exist so long as women are paid unequal wages, bear the burden of unpaid labor, and endure the high cost of childcare. Child care should be provided free of charge at facilities that are open all hours and all days. Some Crisis Pregnancy Centers provide clothes and diapers for babies. Lying, anti-abortion organizations should not be left to fill the gaps of our deficient, war mongering state which gives tax breaks to the rich while denying a living wage to the poor. Housing, healthcare, child care, parental leave, living wages must also be a part of the larger campaign to finally realize the true meaning of choice and thwart the anti-abortion forces once and for all.

Once again, I am trying to write poems about each book that I read. Since I mostly read non-fiction, it can be a bit of a challenge! One of the books that I read in January was Lenin on the Train, by Catherine Merridale. This poem was what I came up with after reading the book. It is about gender as a revolutionary train ride.

The Lenin in Me

By H. Bradford

1/30/18

There is a Lenin inside me,

A man with a sharp mind.

The female body is his train.

Taking him places, carrying that brain to those who will listen

to a program that cuts through

time and space and night,

also like Lenin on the train.

I am on my way to revolution.

I am on my way to change.

The she, the he, and the they will meet at Finland Station.

We are writing what we will say.

In eight short days the world will change.

But, I am content to bide my time.

It is enough to enjoy this ride.

Drawing by Pyotr Vasilievich Vasiliev, Lenin on the Train to Petrograd

One of my goals this year is to write a poem about each book that I read. Earlier this month, I read Red Horizons, a book about the dictatorship/foreign policy of Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu. A character that captured my imagination in the book was the villainous portrayal of Nicolae’s son, Nicu. His story raises questions about justice, especially in light of all of the sexual harassment and assault that has garnered media attention this year. What is justice? How do we make the horrors of history right?

Nicu Ceaucescu

H. Bradford

1/28/18

Nicu crashed the car he was given for raping a 15 year old.

He pissed on the only oysters in the country, when the people ate nettles and scraps.